Red Sun Rising said:
For the record Gentleman Gene, I’m prior military, I’ve served during the first Desert Storm. Your entire description fails to personify me and couldn’t be further off. It doesn’t matter how or what approach I send it in, the simple fact that it comes from me will be enough to have some troll immediately throw the topic to this straw man “Nazi” slam that is not even true.

Well, thanks for your service. As far as me personifying you with my description, I wasn’t referring solely to you. I work in an industry where I try to make a difference when it comes to conservation, sustainability, and land preservation. It’s an uphill battle, and more often than not, the people in power consider real environmental issues–ones that have scientifically been proven–to be illusions created by academics, hipsters, and all the other stereotypes which I’m sure everyone is well aware of. My only beef (pardon the pun), is that people who take a radical and extremist approach make my job much harder, because I approach these issues from a side of logic and reason, and I use economics to support my arguments. But it’s hard to convince someone that an issue is legitimate when they’ve just been yelled at about the same issue by a 20 year old white kid in dreads and a dirty t-shirt at Caribou Coffee telling them the world’s going to end if they don’t eat more tofu. Get what I’m saying? It’s nothing personal towards you.

Gene – You missed the part above where RSR said she was “done with this topic for a while.” Since you’re new here, what that means is she’s so visibly defeated that she’ll take a few month break from her unforgiving proselytizing only to come back and start it all over again.

So give it another 90 days or so before more links, youtube videos and white knight n00bs getting sandy panties.

I hope you stick around though, I personally enjoyed your well informed comments and in tact sense of humor.

I have a bit of a personal perspective on this. In my article “Where Was *MY* Meatgasm?”[/url], I described that I went vegetarian when I was 14 as part of a health kick. I stopped for about two years in college. I was really into weight lifting and I thought eating meat would make me look even more buff than I already was. I didn’t have what I call a “meatgasm”. I didn’t feel a surge of energy or a renewed sense of well being. I felt fine, just the way I did before I quit.

That leads me to believe that a lot of these blog posts from ex-veg*ns who have a “meatgasm”, a near religious experience, from eating meat again, are really about people who were eating sloppily and started getting something they need again.

After about 2 years of not getting any advantages eating meat again, I became a vegetarian again and then vegan. I have been so for a few decades since.

Despite being in my forties, I have none of the cardiovascular issues that everyone in my family has. Everyone in my family wears glasses. I don’t and I have been a computer professional since my late 20s, sitting in front of bright computer screen all day. I weigh about what I did in highschool and I have no need to take prescription medications of any kind.

The health benefits of vegetarian diets (and even vegan diets) have been proven for a long time. When I worked at Doctors Hospital taping medical lectures I recorded a conference where top heart surgeons all agreed that Dr. Dean Ornish’s diet worked to eliminate and and in some cases reversed heart damage but they all felt that patient compliance was not possible. Of course as heart surgeons it was in their best interest to discount the Ornish diet as a possible cure for coronary artery disease. Ornish no longer recommends a strict vegan diet but Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn does.

The whole “meatgasm” thing is weird to me. If you don’t eat sugar for a while and then eat a candy bar the same thing happens and we all know that sugar is not good for humans.

That leads me to believe that a lot of these blog posts from ex-veg*ns who have a “meatgasm”, a near religious experience, from eating meat again, are really about people who were eating sloppily and started getting something they need again.

Does seem that way, doesn’t it? Especially when you factor in some of the health conditions they report.

I don’t know if I’d say “sloppily”, though. If anyone is motivated to avoid animal products and would be versed in vegetable based nutrition I’d think it would be a vegan activist. Seems like they couldn’t be healthy on a purely vegan diet; perhaps it was an inability to absorb b12 and/or iron from plant sources, a difference in processing vegetable fats vs. animal fats, or something similar.

Not to say such a diet doesn’t work for some people, of course. Obviously some people can and do live well on only plants. Doesn’t seem like everyone can, though.

As to sugar: I’ve had the opposite experience. Things like soda tend to make me sick. YMMV and all.

rus said:
Whining about how unpopular opinions are received doesn’t make those opinions any less unpopular.

I know, right? If only everyone who had unpopular opinions would revise those opinions to be more aligned with those of the majority, then we wouldn’t have to be such dicks to them. It’s so simple–how can they not see it? Unpopular opinions are for losers and those losers deserve to be shit upon.

Corrin Radd said:
I know, right? If only everyone who had unpopular opinions would revise those opinions to be more aligned with those of the majority, then we wouldn’t have to be such dicks to them. It’s so simple–how can they not see it? Unpopular opinions are for losers and those losers deserve to be shit upon.

GentlemanGene said:
Well, thanks for your service. As far as me personifying you with my description, I wasn’t referring solely to you. I work in an industry where I try to make a difference when it comes to conservation, sustainability, and land preservation. It’s an uphill battle, and more often than not, the people in power consider real environmental issues–ones that have scientifically been proven–to be illusions created by academics, hipsters, and all the other stereotypes which I’m sure everyone is well aware of. My only beef (pardon the pun), is that people who take a radical and extremist approach make my job much harder, because I approach these issues from a side of logic and reason, and I use economics to support my arguments. But it’s hard to convince someone that an issue is legitimate when they’ve just been yelled at about the same issue by a 20 year old white kid in dreads and a dirty t-shirt at Caribou Coffee telling them the world’s going to end if they don’t eat more tofu. Get what I’m saying? It’s nothing personal towards you.

I feel your pain. Seriously. No one is really trained on how to cope with the realization that we are systematically and fundamentally destroying ourselves and many times, it reveals itself in the ways you describe, to be sure. Their heart is in the right place, and it feels as thought the masses are apathetically indifferent, distracted or in denial, which is frightening, frustrating and can manifest outrage. As was pointed out earlier in this thread, there is more to life and this issue than logic and reason, the heart and conscience are also the emotional part of the equation of wisdom. A greater connection to our world will require love and respect as well as logic and reason.

Red Sun Rising said:
As was pointed out earlier in this thread, there is more to life and this issue than logic and reason, the heart and conscience are also the emotional part of the equation of wisdom.

Are we having a discussion about compassion, or have I opened the wrong page?

To have compassion is to be awake and aware that each moment, each person, each animal, plant, and even rocks and waters have their own subjectivity. If we want our compassion to radiate outward from our center and into the world, changing things for the better, we must first fortify it in ourselves and to each other. We must be able to look deeply into each other’s eyes and truly see the deep and complex humanity behind all of each others’ decisions and eccentricties. We must deeply understand why people do things we fervently disagree with.

Teachers like Dr. King never spoke divisively of those who had trespassed against them, and instead prayed fervently to love their adversaries with such an abiding gentleness, that they might be moved to change. That was their sword. That is the way of non-violence, and it is not an easy way. If you choose it, you must be prepared to lay down your life. There can be no kvetching about oh poor me. Consider that someone with wrong views who acts without compassion, may be acting from a deep well of their own pain, and that before their actions may be changed, their pain must be understood and they must be nurtured. They may be looking to you to act with hearty goodwill, regardless of how you are tested. Be a good example to them.

To change those who are lacking compassion, we must love them unconditionally and unfailingly, as a mother loves her baby. If we do not, then we are trying to use violence to amend violence.

This is not nitpicking, but is the very heart of the seed of compassion. Done properly, it can move the hardest heart, and join us together in amazing and unforeseen ways.